Serving up my thoughts since 2004

I was reading a simple case study today.
They were testing two different versions of a banner that was advertising a webinar.
One of the banners had an image of the presenter, while the other did not.
The banner without the image of the presenter won (by over 50%).

One of the comments was something along the lines of:
I guess this audience prefers banners without an image of a person.

*sigh*

If you don’t immediately realize the mistake the commenter made, don’t feel bad. It’s a very common mistake.

Beyond the fact that a specific banner (which did have have an image of the presenter) won over a different specific banner (which did not have an image of the presenter) you really can’t be sure of anything.

The loosing banner might have won with:

An image of a different person

A different image of the same person

The same image of the same person in a different position or size on the banner.

The same image of the same person in the same position and size but with different elements on the banner changed.

The point is:

Don’t jump to generalized conclusions based on the outcome of a specific experiment.